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Took me 2 years but I finally got around to making my site to petition that March 14 be made Albert Einstein Day. Please help me in paying tribute to not only one of the greatest physicists of all time but a prolific writer, pacifist, humanitarian and teacher. Without Albert’s contributions to humanity, the would would not be the same.

When I was in my 20’s I thought middle age began at 30, then again the average life expectancy of a male who was obese and smoked was 60 years if you were lucky in the early 1980’s, now with modern medicine, life expectancies for men like myself are in the mid 80’s. Realistically, if I can make it another 10 years or so, it may be 90-100. Of course that all depends on how you live the rest of your life! My dad had a premonition that he would die at age 52 like his father and his brother did. Thank god he was wrong, although he has had a couple of close calls, a triple bypass in 2004 and most recently a pulmonary embolism, at 84 he is still going strong!

On Sunday August 5, 2012 I will be 50 years old. Honestly, it really does not bother me and I really don’t want to make a big deal about it. I was a heck of a lot more stressed out on the approach of my 40th birthday! I guess it is all relative. One thing I can count on is, as I age, time seems to increase exponentially. Somehow the laws of physics get a little weird as you age. I was a child, a year seemed like FOREVER! Heck, even an hour could seem like an eternity, especially when it was the last hour of school on a Friday or the hours you sat in a car while driving to go on vacation. “Are we there yet dad?” Today, it feels like someone is speeding up the clock a little more every year till next thing you know, you feel like when you sneeze, an hour passes. It reminds me of a line in Pink Floyd’s song Time: “And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”

This brings me to the subject of the title of the post. Since time is moving faster, I need to adapt my way of life accordingly and from here on out, my new motto in life is: “Life begins at 50!” After a half century of living, I want to live the rest of my life enjoying every minute and being thankful for all I have accomplished so far. No more worrying what I cannot control or wasting time on things that have little or no value. Instead, I want my life to bring value to all the people in my life that matter and even some of those who do not. J I have always been willing to help people in any way I can because I truly do care. Some have told me one of my biggest faults was caring too much. Honestly, I completely to disagree with that because the moment you stop caring is the moment you give up on the true meaning of life! For me, the problem in the world today is too many people don’t care about anyone but themselves. Now I think I have reached an age where I can change that, at least in my own small way.

So now I have explained my view of my life looking forward, I want anyone who feels like life has been passing them by to quickly to join me in making the most of the time we have left! ENJOY!!!!

Ray

FYI: August 5, 1962 (My birth date)

The day I was born the biggest new items were the death of Marilyn Monroe, the arrest or Nelson Mandela incitement & illegally leaving South Africa and the discover of the first quasar by radio signal. Famous people born the same day as me are Otis Thorpe, NBA forward (Vancouver Grizzlies, Detroit Pistons), Patrick Ewing, Kingston Jamaica, NBA center (NY Knicks/Olympic-gold-92) and William Roberts, NFL guard (NY Jets, NE Patriots). (Source: http://www.historyorb.com/date/1962/august/5).

One of my biggest idols of my life has been Albert Einstein. Not only was Albert the father of modern physics, devout pacifist, great humanitarian he also wrote some of my favorite quotes. I think the quote I treasure the most and I have made my personal signature is “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, Imagination encircles the world.” In my life I have known very knowledgeable people who had no imagination and to me that is a waste. In my mind, knowledge without imagination is like owning a nice sports car, but not being able to drive. Another one of my favorite Albert quotes is “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” To me, I have always strived for making things simple. Not because I am lazy, but it helps others to easily understand and reproduce my ideas or designs. There is no greater beauty in this universe than a simple and functional design or formula. How much simpler can you get than E=MC²!
As most of us know, if it were not for Albert’s work on the Theory of Relativity, much of what we know about physics today would have taken perhaps decades longer to achieve. Ask any physicist, what the world of physics would be without Albert’s work and imagination and they would most likely say that physics would be very boring. Albert’s methods of bringing things to their simplest terms made him so well respected within the physics community. Although Albert never had the aid of modern computers or even a calculator to do most of his work, the final product of his labor is still the de facto standard for physics for over 100 years.

As for Albert’s devout pacifism, he did write “I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.” Of course one thing Albert never really forgave himself for was telling President Roosevelt in 1939 that theoretically, using uranium to create a thermonuclear bomb could be possible, and that the USA should form a committee to investigate the theory, this suggestion was taken and would of course later become the Manhattan Project. Albert once wrote that it was his “single greatest mistake.” of his life was writing the first letter to Roosevelt. Albert later wrote “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.” Albert also wrote later “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!”

Few may know of Albert’s humanitarian efforts, but being a pacifist, in my mind, is as close to being a humanitarian as being a vegetarian is to being an animal lover. They kind of go hand in hand. Albert always spoke highly of Mahatma Gandhi and his ideas of peaceful protests. In the early 1930s Einstein recognized the threat that Hitler posed to Jews living in Germany and to himself in particular as a world-famous Jew. In 1932 Einstein left his country of birth never to return. Throughout the thirties Einstein was deluged with pleas for help from relatives and strangers desperate to flee fascism in Europe. Working against harsh immigration quotas imposed against Jews, Einstein wrote affidavits and enlisted the help of friends in assisting as many refugees as possible. By the end of the 1930s, Einstein had written so many affidavits that his signature on a document no longer carried any weight.

At the same time, Einstein was busy raising funds for organizations such as the United Jewish Appeal, and working toward securing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which was realized in 1948 by the creation of the State of Israel. “. . . my relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.” -Einstein in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, November 18, 1952. When Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel and an old friend of Einstein’s, died in 1952 Einstein was offered the Presidency. He regretfully declined, writing: “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.” (Source Historical Society of Princeton)

For these and many other reasons, Albert has been recognized as one of the greatest individuals of 20th century. This is why from this day on; I intend to call March 14, “Albert Einstein Day”! Although I doubt it will ever become a true holiday, I have bought the domains www.alberteinsteinday.com and www.alberteinsteinday.net to begin a grass roots effort to make it one! Maybe someday my hope for an official Albert Einstein Day will come true. If not perhaps I can raise awareness into how truly great a man Albert Einstein was.

CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is being held in Las Vegas this week as you may know. CES always shows a lot of promise for the future of Consumer Electronics but usually avoids the humdrum of business systems. I’ve tried for several years to convince my boss Simon to let me go to CES since many of the new technologies like cell phones and computer peripherals shown at CES will usually winding up in the corporate environment eventually but Simon does not buy that, he thinks sending me to CES in Vegas is like sending a kid into a candy store to buy milk.

Lenovo has to played on both sides of the fence, consumer and business, unlike its predecessor IBM. Lenovo was usually reserved using the flash of color and style in the ThinkPad line in keeping with the tradition of the ThinkPad being the premiere business line of laptops in the industry. But that looks like it is all about to change.

Lenovo has added 2 new lines of ThinkPad systems, X100e and Edge, which added something Thinkpad laptops have been lacking, pizzazz! Gone is the traditional monochromatic rubberized graphite colored chassis and they have been replaced with shiny vivid colors!

The first new colorful model is the X100e which comes in Midnight Black or Heatwave Red, 11.6″ HD Widescreen, sub 3 lbs Ultra Portable laptop not netbook because it has a real processor and HD graphics. The X100e has AMD Athlon NEO processor at 1.6GHz, 1.8″ 5400 RPM hard drives like the T400s, M780G with ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, UltraNav with new multi-touch pad similar to the T400s, Thinkpad wifi and Wireless WAN upgradability starting at $450. The X100e does seem to lack the rugged multi alloy/polymer frame typical of the X series systems so I doubt it has the reliability normally associated with the ThinkPad X models.

The ThinkPad Edge is the other colorful low cost ThinkPad targeted at cost conscious small to mid-sized business. Sporting 3 different colors, Midnight Black glossy, Midnight Black matt and Heatwave Red glossy, the Edge had a typically uncharacteristic silver trim that really seems to set the system apart form the other ThinkPad line. The Edge has an almost iPhonesque style glossy screen which unfortunately is not touch screen. THe Edge does sport redesigned ThinkPad keyboard and UltraNav with new multi-touch pad similar to the T400s. The Edge also comes with AMD Althon processor (Turion X2 1.6GHz), 7200 RPM HD, ATI Radeon HD 3200 IPG 128MB video, 13.3 ” HD Glare 1366×768 display, up to 7.8 hour battery and WWAN upgradable starting at under $600.

What this shows me is Lenovo is willing to bring cool styling to the table in the ThinkPad line to combat Acer, HP, Dell and Apple in wooing the hip, younger and more tech savvy corporations. But my only concern in do so is they may dilute the quality of ThinkPad name in the process but I hope this is not the case. The ThinkPad has always been the leader in quality laptops in the industry and at the company I work for I made sure we exclusivly use ThinkPads which is why we have a less than 1% failure rate on our laptops in the first three years!

Well, if you done any Googling lately (pardon the expression) on new phones at CES, it seems the biggest thing since the iPhone 3GS, is the new Google Nexus One made by HTC. As you may have seen from my previous posts, many Android OS phones have hit the market all viding for that coveted top spot currently held by the venerable iPhone. Unfortunately none have truly come close including the new Motorola Droid. But enter the new kid on the block, Nexus One that has sites like CNET, Egadget, TechCrunch and Telegraph all touting its virtues.

Then throw in a 5 megapixle camera with LED flash, 802.00 a/g/n wifi (Yes that is right N!), Bluetooth 2.1, AGPS, Compass, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 4GB SD (supports 32GB), accelerometer and 720 x 480 video at 20fps for good measure! Then top it off with Android 2.1 (Codename=Eclair) and pack it up in a slick slim case. Yea, this kinda gives me that “nice toy” envy big time!

Reviews seem to like the performance of the Nexus One over the previous Android based phones currently out, pointing out that HTC may finally have got it right. Of course the billion dollar question is: “Will this finally give the iPhone something to worry about?” Well, Google has done a good job in building a development environment that fosters open source coding and thousands of apps are now available. Even though it lacks the polished precision of the Apple Appstore, Android Market does seem to have a broad range of apps. The one big thing the previous Android phones did seem to lack was smooth, consistent performance. Let’s see if 1GHz Snapdragon in the Nexus One changes that. I guess we will see pretty soon if it does.

The Nexus One is available through T-Mobile for $179 or for $549 for an unlocked phone. NOTE: Even though the Nexus One is GSM, it WILL NOT support AT&T 3G networks! A Verizon/Vodafone version will be available in the spring.

Motorola has taken the back seat lately in the cell phone market that not too long ago it was the undisputed champion of. For many years the Razr was the most popular cell phone on the market, but since the advent of the iPhone and the plethora of iPhone wannabes like the htc Touch, Dimond, LG Vue, Blackberry Storm and Palm Pre, Motorola has been far behind in innovating a device to compete in this new touch-screen market. Although Motorola has several touch-screen phones, none has really been successful. Now enters a possible contender, the Motorola Droid. Using the highly anticipated Google Android 2.0 OS and housing a full QWERTY keyboard, Google-powered voice-activated search, a 550MHz processor, and a 3.7-inch with 480×854-pixel resolution, 5-megapixel camera with flash, autofocus and video capture, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi. Couple that with exclusivity to the largest 3G network in the US, Verizon. The Droid seems to have all the right stuff to give AT&T and Apple a real challenge. Verizon has been blasting the TV with a very flashy iDon’t commercials bashing the iPhone’s lack of some basic features like “iDon’t have a real keyboard”, “iDon’t support open development”, “iDon’t customize” and “iDon’t take night shots”. The big question is, can this phone really be the salvation of Motorola who has had a bad financial track record recently? I guess we will find out soon enough. The Droid go on sale November 6th for $199 at Verizon.

Many T-Mobile Sidekick users are understandably angry due to a recent service outage. The reason for the outage according to T-Mobile is a “Server Glitch” at the Danger a Microsoft subsidiary that owns the cloud based server storage service used by the Sidekick. Now the news this weekend that comes from both T-Mobile and Danger/Microsoft is that as many as a million users may lose some or all of the cloud based server data like contacts, photos and other personal information.

The Sidekick support forums at T-Mobile are buzzing with all the posts of users after more than a week of service outages and now the data loss. One vocal Sidekick user has reportedly been banned from the public support forums after voicing his opinions of his displeasure of losing his personal/professional data including 300+ contacts, 20+ notes and 30 tasks. The individual said he ran his entire business and personal life on the Sidekick. He commented that he was so angry that he was thinking of contacting the Washington State Attorney General’s office to lodge a formal complaint.

What concerns me most about this issue is how it is possible that there was no way according to Danger/Microsoft to recover the lost data of all of these people? According to them, the glitch on their servers destroyed all the data. I would think that a company like Microsoft would go to any length to prevent such a loss of data.

This all begs the question on the reliability of cloud based computing in general. With the recent outages for cloud based services like Google gmail, Amazons Simple Storage and Citrix GoToMeeting, many personal and professional users of cloud based services may need to rethink the value of these services if the service providers cannot guarantee their reliability. I personally would never put my trust in storing my personal or professional data in the cloud with all the potential there is for theft or loss. With my luck, some hacker would try to crack my account then go to town trying to find something of value to pawn. When they realize I have nothing of value to them, they delete my stuff just for fun!!

Maybe I’m a little paranoid, but with all security flaws being found out there that open the doors to hackers to get information of value, it is just a matter of time before they figure out how to hack the cloud to services like this to make money from it.

Well, since my last post on the new slimmed down and lower priced ‘PS3’, which is the new ‘Official’ name of Sony’s Top-of-the Line console, Microsoft last week leaked that they were now offering a $50 rebate on the Elite XBOX 360 bringing the price to $250. Well not to be out done, the current Top Dog in the in the gaming junkyard, Nintendo, today announces that they will drop the already low price of the Wii to $199 and offer a %20 discount on all software! This looks to be like a really good holiday season for gamers everywhere. My only question is, will any parents in today’s financial uncertainty be willing to fork out a couple of hundred clams so Johnny can play Halo Wars, Wii Play or Resident Evil 5? I guess we’ll find out in a couple of months when the big holidays sales guns start to hit!

Recently a Micro$oft marketing photo used on the Internet has caused an uproar because someone had done a REALLY POOR Photoshop job or removing an African American man’s face for a Caucasian one when the ad was marketed in Poland.

I know that Micro$oft is in NO WAY a racist company! Diversity has been their mantra in business and advertising for as long as they have been in the industry. I also know that market demographic plays a huge roll in advertising, many geographic regions respond better to if you use images of people from that region. Let’s face it, if you have an ad running in an Asian market with of a bunch of Caucasian people, you probably won’t work as well as if you used a bunch of Asian people. BUT you don’t just take your stock photo and cut off the heads and paste on Asian ones, that is just plain DUMB!! Worse of all, the Micro$oft photo editor forgot to change the hand! Well I’m sure there is a marketing director for Micro$oft in Europe who really wishes they saw that ad before it went out!

This just goes to show that if you really want to get ahead in a marketing champagne, make sure your photos have the right heads for the job, because if you just swap a head may get your head handed to you!

Sony announced yesterday that they will release a thinner lighter PS3 in September. This new system will start with a 120GB drive for $299. Wow, thinner, lighter and cheaper, dang, I wish I could say that! J The new system will have all the same features and performance that the previous models do, just in a 36% smaller and less flashy case. To reduce the size and price, Sony is now using less costly and 33% lower power consumption 45nm Cell processor vs. the 60nm in the previous models had. The processor is still running at the same speed as before. Sony also moved the hard drive to the front of the case for easy upgrading without violating the system warranty. The new PlayStation 3 will come with the new firmware 3.0 which will release for older models in September also.

Firmware 3.0 offers some visual improvements to XMB like:

“What’s New” – The “Information Board” will be replaced with a “What’s New” section for the latest updates in a more visually oriented format.

Status Indicator – In the top right corner will be an indicator bar, which displays your user icon, friend icon, the number of friends you have online and a small message icon to let you know if you have any new messages.

Friends List – Now your PlayStation Network friends will appear in a slightly redesigned format on your Friends List. Also, messages will now be viewable from each of your friends’ respective profiles.

PlayStation Store Shortcuts – A handy shortcut icon to the PlayStation Store under both the Game and Video categories so you can access the latest content quickly and easily.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is still really trailing in the console market behind Xbox360 and Wii but with a sub $300 price tag, the new PS3 may change the numbers. With the crucial holiday season which is quickly approaching, it will be interesting to see what happens with the numbers come January 2010.